What milk to give to an infant with Cow's Milk Protein Allergy

As they say, “Breast milk is best for babies.” But in cases where breastfeeding proves to be difficult because of a total elimination diet, especially for infants diagnosed with cow’s milk protein allergy, the only option may be to formula feed your baby. The question is what milk do you give to an infant with Cow’s Milk Protein Allergy? 

One of the first suggestions that you would probably hear from your health provider is to try soy milk. In our case, we tried Isomil and S26 Soy Gold. But because soy milk was causing our little babette to have hard stools, we switched to a hydrolyzed whey formula. We were able to try both Nutramigen and NAN HW. But we decided to settle on NAN HW because Nutramigen is so expensive. In addition, Nutramigen is also only available in selected Mercury Drug stores and in only one size, a 400g can. NAN HW is available in a 400g can, 800g can, and 1.4kg box. Its price will also not come as a shock to you, unlike that of Nutramigen. 

Before we were actually able to settle on which formula milk to give to our little babette, we researched about possible substitutes for breast milk. Amino acid based milks came up in one of our searches but I am not sure whether this type of milk is available in the Philippines. We haven’t asked our doctor about amino acid based milks either so if you are interested, you might want to get more information from your health provider.  Some considerations also while we were in the process of switching from Nutramigen to NAN HW are the difference in terms of the nutritional content. NAN HW has lower nutrient values compared to Nutramigen per 100ml of the formula.

Nutritional Facts for NAN HW (left) and Nutramigen (right).

When our little babette was first diagnosed with the allergy, the question we asked our health provider was whether she will outgrow the allergy and be able to drink cow’s milk formula later on. We were told that some babies outgrow it but for now, we just have to wait and observe. It is still too early to tell.

There are milk substitutes that you could choose from. But, as always, it would be best to consult your doctor or your health provider before switching to formula milk.